


Memorare

by leafonthewind



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:12:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1328065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafonthewind/pseuds/leafonthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of Jim Kirk through birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Years Zero & One

**2233:4.**

No one remembers their _actual_ birth day, except you.

You don't remember it, but you've heard about it enough times that sometimes you think you can remember parts. If you close your eyes you can almost see the medical shuttle with _37_ painted next to _USS KELVIN (NCC-0514)_ on the hull. Part of the three is obscured by a scorch mark that mars the shuttle's entire upper side. Inside it's white and bright and quiet. You can imagine the scratchiness of Starfleet-issued blankets, the sharp scent of antiseptic, the raw sterility that along with the radiation can be blamed later for your many allergies.

You see it sometimes from your mother's perspective, holding a tiny baby in her arms. Tiny you.

You're two months premature, brought on by the stress of the attack. The nurse in the shuttle has to put you in an incubator soon. You're too small and too cold and you're crying for someone you know you couldn't possibly already miss. He was never there, but he's there now. His voice sometimes, and also sometimes him. You've never seen him but you've seen pictures and you've got a good imagination; you can fit him in.

He smiles at the two of you. You're good at imagining his smile.

You know you can't actually remember your birth day, but you do.

**2234:4.**

It's your first birthday and you don't remember this one either, but you've seen the set of pictures that goes along with it.

Picture one. A wispy-haired baby sits in a high chair. That's you. A messy-haired three-year-old sits to your right, grinning broadly. That's Sam.

Picture two. A cake's been brought over and you're round-eyed in wonder, staring at the flame flickering on its single candle.

Picture three. The candle has you transfixed. Your hand's stuck out, grasping, ready to capture it and hold its magic in your palm.

Picture four. The flame is out now and it's just you, crying, barely in the frame as the camera angles up; the last picture it took before it was dropped.

You never made a wish, but happy first birthday anyway.


	2. Year Two

**2235:4.**

Sam puts up a fuss because what about _his_ cake, what about _his_ presents, and your mom has to scramble to appease him.

She's much, much too late.

Luckily when you're two, your birthday is mostly about other people anyway. You're still too young to appreciate it, really, so you don't know the significance of the smoke alarm going off over the shrieks of a four-year-old temper tantrum, you don't realize that the smell of smoke pouring from the oven is why you never had a cake, you don't understand the apology your mom gives you over the broken action figure (box ripped open, head torn off).

You have a ball you got months ago and you squeeze it and squeal happily after the commotion's died down, toddling to your mom to press it at her with clumsy hands.

You don't understand the weariness in her expression, you don't understand why Sam's howling in time-out, you don't understand your birthday's ruined.

You _do_ understand it though when she sighs and picks you up to put you in your crib.

"I'm sorry, baby, but Mommy's tired."

She doesn't put your ball in the crib with you, and in a few minutes, you start crying too.


	3. Year Three

**2236:4.**

She promised to bake you a cake.

You know that and you're excited as you burst back in from playing outdoors, barefoot and toddling through the house. You're supposed to be in the backyard staying out of her way, but you can't wait any longer and the screen door slams closed behind you. You were building sandcastles in the sandbox and your hands are dirty with it. You're holding a bucket filled with sand to show off to her, to show her what you did. You're carrying it with exaggerated care so that it doesn't spill, and you don't realize that your care is for nothing. Dried sand falls off your skin and dusts the floor everywhere you walk anyway, a breadcrumb trail that marks the way between the backdoor and the kitchen.

She's standing at the counter, hands planted on it and head bowed. A mixing bowl's next to her, and bags you wouldn't recognize but that are of sugar and flour.

"Mommy!" Your squeal is triumphant. You clutch the bucket to your chest, determined to show off your prize.

She doesn't acknowledge you. Some of your confidence waivers. You free a hand to grab for her pant leg and only then do you realize she's crying.

She breaks down at your touch and sobs, pulling away, her hand jerking and knocking a candle off the counter, and you have no idea what to do until someone else grabs you from behind. You drop the bucket of sand and it spills across the floor. It joins the bright wax bubble number in cheery, brilliant yellow: 3.

Sam pulls you out of the room, angry. "Stop it!"

You don't understand and your chin quivers, upset. Sam is unmoved, a five-year-old whose eyes look too old for him to really be only five. "You're why she's crying," he says fiercely and you still don't understand. Sam shoves you, hard enough that you hit the ground. "Stay away!"

You flee to your room and calm down after a half hour, and you spend until supper time playing with your toys there. By the time you come down, the cake ingredients have disappeared, and dinner for you is heated frozen vegetables and a chopped up hot dog.

You're too young to really like baseball, but you'll eventually grasp the rules well-enough to break them. In baseball, the batter has three strikes before he's out and doesn't get to try again.

Maybe for you and your birthdays, this was strike three.


	4. Year Four

**2237:4.**

"I hate it here." He's scowling at you the second you come down the stairs, grip tight on the worn banister. "I wanna go home."

"I wanna go home too," you mimic, hoping that'll be the end of it, but it isn't and Sam's eyes light up in fierce triumph. You've fallen into his trap.

"Well we _can't_ ," he says scathingly. He's six and he has his school bag slung over a shoulder and he's getting ready to go out the door to catch the school bus. Winter break's over and it's freezing outside. It's freezing inside too. Your uncle keeps the heat low so the bill isn't too high, and you wiggle your toes against the cold wooden boards of the farmhouse stairs.

You don't respond and stare pointedly away. You don't want a fight. It's your birthday and you think maybe you and Sam can celebrate it later. When you say nothing, Sam snaps, "She's not coming back."

That gets your attention. You lock eyes with him.

"Yeah." He's vindictive now. "She's not coming back. She left 'cause of you."

It isn't true, and Uncle Frank reassures you of that later, after Sam's gone and he's come back in from tending to the animals. She left because she's in Starfleet, because she's on long-range missions, because she's put them off for as long as she can. She left and now you're here in Riverside, Iowa with her brother, and the door opens and he stamps his boots off in the entrance way, shucking his jacket.

"What d'you want for breakfast, Jimmy boy?"

You shrug. You don't know your uncle. You've (supposedly) seen him on Christmases but you don't remember him, and you've only been staying with him for a few weeks now, not even a month. He's a stranger, but he's trying so hard to make you like him. He crouches down in front of you, hands on his knees.

"C'mon. You're the birthday boy. Bacon'n'eggs?"

It sounds good. You say yes and follow him into the kitchen where you help by getting out plates and pouring orange juice. You spill a little of it and your uncle has to bite back a snap of impatience. He bites it back though and you have a nice breakfast and later you get a slice of cake he picked up from the general store (it's a little stale but you aren't complaining) and a toy truck that's second hand. He's apologetic but genuine; he wants to win you over. You can see in his eyes that he's worn out, but he wants you to have a nice birthday. You thank him for the truck and he's pleased.

It's only later that you realize that Sam was right. No matter how many other reasons you found to blame, the real reason she left was because of you.


	5. Year Five

**2238:4.**

She sends you _The Karate Kid_ and it's the start of a tradition.

She sends you something then and on every birthday after, but _The Karate Kid_ is the first and you can't wait to watch it, loading it up on the holoscreen almost before the wrapping paper has fallen to the floor. You watch it three times in succession, only getting up to get snacks and to pee, and fifteen minutes in Uncle Frank has muttered some excuse and wandered off. By the second play-through, Sam's complaining loudly. You remind him it's _your birthday_ and he scowls and stomps off. He kicks the lamp on the way out and it rattles and Uncle Frank bellows up the stairs.

"Knock it off!"

Sam's scowl turns down the stairs, no longer directed at you. He's seven and he's looking to pick a fight. He's been looking all year, ever since you got here, and he's gotten good at picking them. He knows just what buttons to push when.

Today's button is you.

"But it's Jimmy's _birthday_ ," Sam singsongs down the farmhouse's stairs, more challenge than melody. He stomps down to the first floor, every step a taunt, a dare.

You turn up the volume so you can only hear the fight on the TV. The one downstairs you already know the lines to by heart.


	6. Year Six

**2239:4.**

"You're not my dad," Sam screams. They're both screaming at each other, faced off in the living room. Uncle Frank looks like he's equal parts furious and disgusted with himself for getting into a shouting match with an eight-year-old, but he can't seem to pull away.

"Don't care, buddy. My house, _my rules_." He's livid, fuming. It's become his mantra over the past year as Sam acted out again and again and again, and he didn't have time to deal with it. Your mother comes home for a few months at a time and it's never enough to correct the outbursts of two boys both desperate for and hating structure, living under the rule of a man too busy to give it to them. "You want to stay here, you do chores like _everyone else_. Look at Jimmy. He's helping."

You freeze. You're busy cleaning up the table, moving dishes still covered in icing and cake crumbs to the sink to be washed. Your handful of presents you've already moved to your room, out of harm's way. Sam breaks things whenever he's pissed.

He's pissed always.

Uncle Frank's out constantly, all the time on the farm and he has you two doing chores on it. He didn't ask for two boys but he does his best.

He's done trying to win you over. He gave that up months ago and now just wishes he had two boys who stay out of his way and don't break everything he owns and don't get into fights with each other every other day.

You realize you forgot to make a wish when you blew out your candles. Sam knocks a glass off the coffee table and it shatters and he storms out the door.

No one gets what they wish for that year.


	7. Year Seven

**2240:4.**

You lie on your backs in the snow, jackets thick around you and hoods drawn up and shivering under the night sky.

You talk about the constellations. Sam knows some and you know the others. You point at them and look and look.

"I wanna go up there," you admit. Your breath puffs out in a cloud above you, illuminated by the moon.

"No you don't." He says it flatly, contradicting you. Some of the camaraderie that had slowly blossomed, fragile and tentative in tendrils between you, shatters. You aren't friends and you haven't been for a while. You're adversaries. Allies sometimes. Antagonists. Combatants. You're rivals and the competition is for everything and it changes daily; it's for who can milk the cows the fastest or who can spook them the most; it's for who can get Uncle Frank to yell the loudest; it's for who can get the best grades in school, who can hit the hardest, who can last the longest without a whimper of pain.

You usually lose. Your eye still smarts, swollen from only hours before. Your lip is cut but you no longer taste iron. Sam decided this year it wasn't right to celebrate on a funeral. Mom got involved, angry over a video chat. Uncle Frank came in to separate you two. Your cake wound up smashed on the floor, and maybe you're okay with that, maybe it was actually you who knocked it off the table in the end, because you're old enough now to understand guilt.

It _isn't_ right to celebrate on a funeral.

"He would've hated you," Sam says, and he says it conversationally. You go still in the snow. You think it's not true. You don't want to believe it, but then he says, "But he would've hated me too."

You know that's true. You believe both of them.


	8. Year Eight

**2241:4.**

You're caught with the phaser.

Uncle Frank does private security and has several of them. He's taken you out shooting at a make-shift range set up a half-mile from the house, with hay bales blasted to shit from years of being aimed at. You can shoot a bottle off one of them from thirty feet away, and you know how to check to make sure the safety's on, and you've memorized the four weapons safety rules.

Your games with Sam have become dangerous.

You used to tussle, but now you fight, and now you know the difference between the two, because there is a difference when your cheek's pressed into the dirt and there's pain shooting through your shoulder from how hard it's twisted and the only way out isn't when someone says _I'm done_ or _stop_ or _uncle_ , no, the only way a fight ends is when the winner's decides he's done with it.

That's the difference between tussling and a fight.

Sam makes sure you know that.

Your mom left again a few weeks ago. She tries to come back a few months of every year and usually manages it. The months she visits are always different, except January. She's never there in January, just like she never looks at you like you're _you_ , just like she never calls Sam by his first name. It's a triumvirate of things that remind her of _him_ , and this time when she was back she told you (sadly, tearfully) that she was so sorry, that you had his smile, his sense of humor, and she makes you promise to be good.

"Can you be good, Jimmy?" She's tired when she says it, tired of hearing Frank yell to her long-distance about Sam's and your latest scuffle. You're doing well in school, which makes up for it somewhat, but it's obvious she thinks you're out of control.

You promise, because it's what she wants to hear.

It's one of the few promises you break.

It was Sam who took the phaser out, Sam who took it to the range to shoot over your protests, Sam who brought it back too late to hide, but Sam's on Uncle Frank's last nerve and you know that. They're at a breaking point, and that's why you grab it from him and claim it was you who took it out and shot it. It's you whose hide is tanned, you who bears the punishment with gritted teeth and watering eyes, you who limps up to your room to look proudly at Sam because you think that maybe now that you're on the same side again, you can finally be friends.

Sam's glaring at you, his arms crossed. "I didn't need your help," he says coldly.

"But--"

"Next time, Jimmy, keep your nose out of other people's business."

Sam stalks off, disappearing back downstairs and leaving you to an empty room and an ache you find that's also in your heart.


	9. Year Nine

**2242:4.**

Her name is Arrow, and it's love at first sight.

She's a beautiful buckskin with a prance in her gait, all lean muscles and quick teeth that you find right away about when she bites you on the elbow when you look away.

You love her more than you've ever loved anything.

Your uncle unveils the filly that morning, leading you out to the barn where she's waiting in a stall, ears up and head cocked to look at you unafraid while her breath mists out in the cold winter air. She's both of yours, meant for Sam too, a last-ditch effort by Uncle Frank because he thinks that maybe having something to be responsible for, something that's _yours_ and not his, will stop the endless war.

Sam doesn't care. He recognizes a bribe when he sees it and stomps off, retreating back through the snow to the house again, but you are won. You stretch out your fingers and stroke her nose, her black mane, her swishing tail, and she bites you on the arm and stares at you with unapologetically glittering eyes and it makes up for everything.

You stay outside the rest of the day and fall asleep in her stall with her, even though Sam tells you that you'll wake up trampled.

It's your best birthday ever. You don't even need to make a wish.


End file.
